


Empty Rooms

by Lomonaaeren



Series: Never Come Back Home [3]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Drama, Established Relationship, M/M, Past Emotional Infidelity, Past Harry Potter/Draco Malfoy/Severus Snape
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-22
Updated: 2020-07-22
Packaged: 2021-03-04 23:41:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,482
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25434814
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lomonaaeren/pseuds/Lomonaaeren
Summary: Sequel to “Never Come Back Home” and “Vacancy.” Harry has moved on from his failed relationship with Draco and Severus, but they haven’t. The odd thing is that they think they can make it Harry’s problem.
Relationships: Astoria Greengrass/Draco Malfoy, Harry Potter/Original Male Character(s), Severus Snape/Original Male Character(s)
Series: Never Come Back Home [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1556002
Comments: 49
Kudos: 1073





	Empty Rooms

**Author's Note:**

> This is a sequel to my fics “Never Come Back Home” and “Vacancy,” and the final fic in the series, as requested by several people. It is also one of my “From Litha to Lammas” fics.

“What’s that, Harry?”

Harry rolled his eyes as he watched the black owl flutter down towards him. Honestly, Severus needed to get a less distinctive bird. On the other hand, he probably liked the idea that it would stir up certain emotions in the people who watched it fly towards them.

Even if, in Harry’s case, the main emotion was exasperation.

“Another letter from Severus.” Harry ignored the quiet that had fallen on the other side of the table, the glances that he knew Ron and Hermione would be exchanging. He handed the owl a treat from the little sack he’d taken to carrying around on his belt—honestly, Draco and Severus sent him more owls now than they had when they were all living together and they needed to make excuses—and opened the parchment.

_I love you. Come back to me._

“Well, he’s learned the art of simplifying the messages,” Harry said, and used a crackle of wandless magic to burn the twist of parchment in his hand. He shook his head at the owl who shifted anxiously on the table. “No reply.”

The owl gave a sad hoot, but Harry only smiled. “If you go back and indicate that you’re not going to deliver the letters to me anymore, he might give you a holiday from it.”

Of course, the owl blamed Harry, not Severus, and flapped its wings sulkily as it took off again. Harry shook his head and picked up his soup spoon again. “Sorry, Ron, Hermione. He hasn’t taken the hint yet.”

“Do you think,” Hermione asked, chewing on a curl of hair the way she used to when she was studying for Transfiguration, “that it would hurt to answer him, just once?”

“Yes,” Harry replied without hesitation.

“Oh.” Hermione exchanged another glance with Ron. “Why, Harry?”

She was being very gentle, which Harry appreciated in a way, but she also didn’t understand the dynamics of the relationship he’d left behind no matter how many times Harry explained to her. He sighed and leaned back in his chair. “I did that. I told him to leave me alone, and he won’t.”

“I mean—answer him in the way he wants. Spend time with him.”

Harry stared at her in silence, to the point that Hermione began to blush. Then Harry shook his head, and answered, because _she_ deserved the courtesy of one. “They didn’t notice I was gone for a fortnight, Hermione. Why should I?”

“Maybe your being gone taught them what you meant to them.” Ron’s voice started strong and then got to be a mumble near the end. Harry didn’t need to see Hermione’s elbow probing Ron’s ribs to know who had coached him to say those words.

Harry snorted. “Draco hasn’t sent me any letters except the ones saying that I embarrass him and if I really cared about him, I would pretend to still be dating him for public relations purposes. Then he spent the longer half of the last three letters complaining about how much Astoria bores him.”

“Definitely don’t get back together with him, then,” Ron said, a little gleefully. Harry had to smile. Ron had always hated Draco more than Severus, even when Draco had changed his behavior a bit after the war.

_Not far enough, though._

“I hate seeing you so unhappy,” Hermione said.

“Maybe I’m a bit blank at the moment,” Harry said, turning to stare at her curiously, “but I’m not unhappy. I was unhappy for the last year as I tried to work out what to do about Draco and Severus. Why do you think I’m that way now?”

“The loss of a relationship—”

“I lost it a long time ago, that’s the problem,” Harry said quietly. “We technically lived in the same house, but Draco and Severus never noticed me, and they invested all their emotions in their new partners. I was trying to breathe life into a corpse.”

Hermione nodded at Severus’s letter. “That doesn’t sound like it.”

Harry eyed her. “If you have something to say about my relationship with Theseus and some reason I should get back together with those arseholes, Hermione, just say it.”

She started at the language, but she said, “I think it’s too quick. You met Theseus, what, two days after you wrote that letter to Snape and Malfoy that you weren’t coming back? I’d hate to see you jump into a new relationship that quickly and get heartbroken.”

Harry relaxed with a smile. She was trying to watch out for him the way she always did, that was all. It was part of their friendship. “I actually met Theseus six months ago.”

“So you were thinking about moving on with him, then?”

Harry snorted. “Of course not. Given how much I went round and round about leaving Draco and Severus, I was incapable of thinking about it that way then. But Theseus is a magical researcher, and he hadn’t read the papers any time recently. He thought I was still single, so he asked me out. I told him I was dating two men.”

He had done that on purpose, he admitted to himself. If someone was going to be shocked and lean away from him, then let them do it as soon as they met him and heard about the number and gender of his partners, without even learning that they were both former Death Eaters.

“What did he say?” Ron was munching on a scone with marmalade. He might want to keep the conversation going just so that Hermione didn’t nudge him again to say something about healthy relationships, Harry thought.

“He shrugged and said that was too bad, and if I was ever single again, I could come and ask him out.”

“You didn’t tell me that Theseus was a magical researcher. I’d like to discuss things with him.”

“He researches dead rituals, Hermione. Historical ones, ones that no one performs in the modern world because we’re missing ingredients or the records describing them are fragmentary. Not house-elves.”

Hermione narrowed her eyes. “When did I say that I only wanted to ask about house-elves?”

“You’re either looking for discussions about house-elves or converts in theoretical discussions,” Harry said dryly, and settled in for a lecture. He caught Ron’s eye behind Hermione’s back, and Ron shook his head at him before escaping out the door to his own work.

The way Harry saw it, this discussion with Hermione would come up at some point, and a lecture was better than a continuing relationship conversation any day.

*

“Sorry I’m late.”

“Are you late?”

Harry had to smile as he watched Theseus look up from the pile of books and parchments and scrolls and scraps and incunable and manuscripts in front of him. He had thought, after Draco and Severus, that he would want someone who was aware of his presence at all times, and resent a man who lost track of it for even a moment.

But Theseus was too charming to get angry at. And when he saw Harry, his face lit up in a way that—

That Harry couldn’t remember someone’s face doing for him.

He shook the thought out of his head and leaned down to kiss Theseus gently on the forehead. “Our dinner reservations are in five minutes.”

“Sure, let me just clean up here.” Theseus stood up and moved his wand in a single, well-practiced motion. The scrolls snapped shut, the books closed on their bookmarks, protective spells shimmered into being around the oldest materials, and everything else flew back to its place on the shelf in front of the shop.

“How long did it take you to pack all those spells into the one wand motion?” Harry asked.

“Oh, a week of research, then a day of working on it,” Theseus said. He took Harry’s arm, watching his green robes with bright eyes. “Are those new? I mean, you look fine either way.”

Harry laughed quietly. “Yes, they’re new. I’ve heard rumors about Halcyone’s. They don’t let you through the door if you’re not a pure-blood, they want you to able to speak at least two languages because of the way the server details the items, they’ll come by to ask you about your education at random points in the meal—”

Theseus scoffed. “It’s true that Halcyone’s is exclusive, but they don’t base their decisions on blood status. I’d never get through the door, either.”

Harry nodded. “What about education, though? That could have admitted you and might keep me out.”

“I wouldn’t do that to you.”

Harry stopped and swallowed a little as he stared up at Theseus. He had reached out and had gently run his fingers down the side of Harry’s cheek. His blue eyes were so bright that Harry found himself looking away.

“You deserve to be treated decently,” Theseus said. “I’m so sorry they hurt you to the point where you don’t believe you do.”

Harry felt himself flushing. This was the kind of thing that he hadn’t discussed even with Ron and Hermione. He’d resisted and changed the subject when Hermione had acted like she _did_ want to discuss it. “And I didn’t mean to ruin our evening with bad memories,” he said as lightly as he could.

“I promise that we’ll be seated at Halcyone’s with no trouble, and that you can order anything you want,” Theseus said. His voice was as gentle as dandelion fluff. “People who like it and want to keep the clientele exclusive enough to suit _their_ tastes spread those exaggerated rumors. But if you feel uncomfortable, I’d much rather remain here with you, or go to your flat and have dinner there. Maybe Muggle takeaway. I haven’t had that since I was a kid and my mum would order it.”

Harry relaxed. “I’d like to try Halcyone’s, actually. I haven’t been out to eat at a good restaurant other than the Leaky Cauldron in a while.”

“The Leaky Cauldron barely qualifies as a pub, let alone a _restaurant._ ”

And that was an argument that Harry was more than happy to have on the way to Apparate to their reservations.

*

“Draco? Are you all right?”

Draco removed his hand from the stem of his wineglass, which had nearly cracked beneath his touch, and smiled reassuringly across the table at the woman who was going to be his bride, because she had to be. “Oh, yes. I swallowed a bit sharply, that’s all. The wine is colder than I thought it was.”’

“We should speak to someone about that.” Astoria leaned back and looked around the softly-lit main room of Halcyone’s for their server.

“Yes, of course,” Draco said, while his eyes tracked the movement of Harry Potter and the man he’d walked in next to across the room.

They took seats at a small table near the fireplace. Harry put his elbows on the tabletop, making Draco wince despite himself. _How_ had he been with the idiot for so long?

But by far the better question was: Why did the idiot’s leaving make such a hole open in Draco?

“Yes, we wanted to ask about the wine. My date is concerned that it’s too cold.”

Somehow, Draco got through the conversation with the man Astoria had called over, and forced himself to ignore the temptation to turn his head towards Harry. When he had secured a new glass of wine and could manage to glance in Harry’s direction without being too obvious about it, he saw the man who was with Harry holding forth, waving his hands in the air.

_At least it’s obvious who he chose to be with, someone as vulgar as he is._

But Draco couldn’t _hear_ what they were talking about, and as soon as he could, he made a graceful excuse to Astoria to go to the loo. He walked briskly in that direction, then Disillusioned himself at a point where he would pass naturally into the shadows that Halcyone’s multiple fires cast everywhere, and drifted carefully back towards Harry’s table.

“Anyway, if you were going to learn another language, I would make it French. You’d be bound to use it more often than Italian.”

“But you were telling me about all those fascinating Italian manuscripts you read, Theseus. Are you saying that you don’t want to read them together?”

Draco curled his lip, but then he pictured Harry bending over a scroll with this man close to him, two dark heads together, voices murmuring pleasantly—

“Did you hear something? Like someone’s teeth grinding together?”

Harry was looking around with a faint frown. Theseus (what a name) turned to scan the area behind them, but then he shook his head and faced his date again. “I suppose it might have been the fires. They seem to crackle rather loudly.”

“ _They seem to crackle rather loudly, don’t they_?” Draco imitated under his breath. Good Merlin, the man was a _boor._ Why was Harry with him?

But he didn’t find the answer in the nuggets of conversation he was able to listen to before good manners (and the ability to fool Astoria that he had just gone to the loo) made him have to leave. They were about languages, research, the food they were ordering—roasted swan, also a plebeian’s choice, just like French—and the arrests that Harry had made that day in a dragon-poaching case.

Theseus had toasted Harry when he talked about that, his eyes bright with what looked like honest admiration. Draco had been tempted to remove the Disillusionment Charm and tell the man that Harry was such an indifferent sex partner that he might as well save the toasts and the flattery.

But he had to leave, and he was so distracted he barely remembered to remove the Disillusionment Charm before he sat down across from Astoria. She jumped a little, then smiled at him. “Was there a long line at the loo?”

“Yes, there appeared to be some sort of mess with the charmwork,” Draco invented on the spot. The men’s and women’s bathrooms were in separate parts of the restaurant, because Halcyone’s was refined, and Astoria was far too proper to go looking for the men’s.

“Well, then. We should discuss when you’re coming home to meet my parents.”

Draco used his new wineglass to hide the brittleness of his smile. “We should.”

And yet, although he discussed it with spirit and made it seem as if his reluctance on the issue was due solely to being worried about embarrassing himself in front of Astoria’s parents, in the end, he sent her home alone through the Floo and followed Harry and his date, Disillusioned, out of Halcyone’s and down Diagon Alley.

*

“I’m glad that you’re not going to hold our argument against me.”

Harry rolled his eyes. “It wasn’t really an argument, Theseus, just a statement that you disagreed with me about whether the Ministry should have done something differently during the war.”

“I thought you would be upset at me for defending the people who just gave in and went along with You-Know-Who. Especially when you stood up to him and made all those sacrifices to do it.”

Harry sighed a little and leaned against the front door of Theseus’s small house off Diagon Alley. It had sturdy stone walls so thick with wards that Harry thought he wasn’t the only one who remembered the war.

Theseus stared at him anxiously. That anxiety wasn’t perfect. Neither was his reluctance to call Voldemort by his name or his habit of forgetting the time.

But he _saw_ Harry, and he knew that his disagreement might have affected Harry. Harry didn’t need someone perfect. He needed someone who could accept that he was a real person with a real point-of-view of his own, not a doll they could sit on a shelf and wait to play with until they wanted.

“I’m not fond of all of them,” Harry admitted. “But I know it wasn’t just one person’s decision. It was Britain’s whole decision to leave it up to me to defeat Voldemort—” Theseus drew in a breath but didn’t object “—and then act like they should go along with him when he took over the Ministry. I think we need to change as a society, instead of blaming a person here or there for the decisions of a society. That’s what we tried already.”

Theseus smiled slowly. “So you’re not going to go out and hunt down some of the people who thought you were mad then and who probably blame you for not having ended the war soon enough.”

Harry snorted and shook his head. “No. If they attacked me, though, I’d defend myself. And I’m not going to martyr myself trying to soothe their complaints, the way I probably would have when I was young and stupid.”

“You’re not young now?” Theseus asked, gently catching Harry’s wrist and drawing him forwards.

Harry felt a warmth bloom in his chest, more welcome than the heat he had thought would be there. Anyone could see them like this, in the middle of Diagon Alley near Theseus’s combination of house and bookshop, and it didn’t matter. Theseus was looking at Harry like he was the only thing that mattered in the world, not watching over his shoulder for reporters or wondering if it was too public.

“I still am,” Harry said. “But I hope not stupid.”

“You’re far from that,” Theseus agreed, and leaned in.

It felt as though someone had asked Harry exactly what kind of kiss he would like best and then managed to answer him. Theseus was gentle, but persistent, and the kiss continued the warmth up from Harry’s chest to his mouth. Harry found himself softly moaning, which he hadn’t known he was going to do.

Theseus pulled back before Harry was ready, but on the other hand, he could hardly blame someone for wanting to move slowly right now. “I’ll see you before Sunday?” Theseus asked.

Harry nodded. They’d set Sunday for their next date, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t have a Floo conversation or something before then. “Sure. Good night, Theseus.”

“Good night, Harry.” Theseus smiled at him one more time, pushed the glasses up his nose that kept threatening to fall down, and then turned and unlocked his door to let himself in. Harry watched the simple motion with a feeling like a lamp shining in his chest.

Then he turned around—

And ran straight into Draco, who had apparently just removed a Disillusionment Charm.

Draco sneered at him, his hair sticking up around his head the way Harry had only seen when Draco had been running his hands through it. “You’ve moved on pretty quickly, haven’t you? To letting someone else touch and kiss you when you’ve only been away from us for a couple weeks?”

Harry had wondered how he would feel if one of his former lovers confronted him. He’d thought he would turn red, splutter, maybe hex them.

Instead, such a cold rage filled him that it took him a moment to realize it even _was_ rage. And he knew exactly what to say.

“Interesting words from someone who was moving on with Astoria _before_ we were even away from each other.”

Draco was the one who turned bright red, something Harry could see in the dim light from the one lightpost at the end of the alley. “What? You knew I had needs! Neither of you were fulfilling them! I had to have someone new!”

Harry shook his head. All of Draco’s justifications, which would have made his hand itch for his wand at one point, were just breaking against the crystalline wall that now reared up in his chest. “It doesn’t matter, Draco. What matters most is that you’re _not_ going to be able to make me feel guilty for dating Theseus. And you know we’re thoroughly broken up and that you’re with Astoria now. Go away.”

“You _kissed_ him!”

“And you stalked us here. From Halcyone’s, I imagine. That’s rather disturbing, isn’t it?”

“How _dare_ you.”

“No, Draco, I got over daring a long time ago. I’m going to do exactly what I want now, and if you regret it—well, you should have tried harder to hang onto me, shouldn’t you? Go have a happy life with Astoria.”

“You’re going to regret this.”

Harry took a step away, looked back over his shoulder, and smiled. Draco recoiled as if he saw a threat in that, then relaxed and gave him a sullen glare.

“I think you and Astoria are meant for each other,” Harry said, and then Apparated.

*

Severus had never imagined that spending so much time with a man whose main interest was Potions, like his own, would be…exhausting.

He and Ares could brew in the morning, and that would go well. Severus would make strides on one of several experimental potions he was developing, and then he would be ready for conversation about Ares’s potions.

But Ares tended not to finish at the same time, which left as much as ten minutes of boredom for Severus before their lunches began. And then Ares could not seem to sense when Severus wanted to speak and when he wanted to be silent, ruminating, and when he wanted to hear about his conversation partner’s activities. He was clearly only listening for a chance to speak, although sometimes he would respond to what Severus was saying—if only to offer advice.

Severus needed no _advice._ He had been brewing for far longer than Ares.

On one particularly intolerable morning, when his cauldron had half-melted from a volatile combination of ingredients that the apothecary he had bought them from should be fined for letting go bad, Severus went and knocked on the door of Ares’s lab, requiring sympathy. But Ares only opened his door and shook his head a little.

“Sorry, Severus, the fumes are volatile right now,” he said, and then shut the door as if Severus’s presence there did not indicate a _need._

 _There are such things as Stasis Charms,_ Severus thought, staring at the door in silence, before he abruptly whirled and strode out of the shop.

He didn’t keep track of where his own footsteps were taking him, but when he looked up and found one of the magical telephone boxes that were an entrance to the Ministry, he admitted it in the silence of his own brain. Severus stepped in and dialed the right sequence of letters, curling his lip at the chirpy voice that directed him to pick a reason for his visit.

“To see Auror Harry Potter.”

The badge that rolled out infuriated him; it bore the words _Auror Potter Fan_. Severus clipped it to his robes anyway and put up with the descent of the telephone box into the Ministry, then stalked past the few people who looked like they might have dared to stop him.

He made it up to the Department of Magical Law Enforcement’s floor, and then ran into problems. There was a _desk_ outside Harry’s door. That was _ridiculous._ The man was just another Auror! What business did he have endorsing this affectation?

“I’m sorry, sir, but you don’t have an appointment and the Head Auror is busy at the moment.” The wizard at the desk looked young enough that he could have been a student when Severus was still teaching at Hogwarts, but Severus didn’t remember him. He didn’t like him, though. Or the opaque look in his black eyes. It was as if the youth didn’t even know he was facing a war hero.

“What does the Head Auror have to do with me? I wish to see _Auror Potter._ ” Perhaps stressing the name would allow him to make his way past the secretary’s obvious hearing difficulties.

For a moment, the young man’s eyes widened, and Severus thought he would get some politeness. But then he said, “Sir. Auror Potter _is_ the Head Auror.”

“That’s impossible.”

Even as he spoke, Severus’s mind was racing through the past few months, sorting out scraps of rumor and newspaper stories and references that Harry had made to his job. If Harry had been promoted to Head Auror, Severus would have _known_ it. Was this some sort of elaborate deception or joke Harry had set up to keep Severus away from him?

It would not work. Harry must have known how much Severus despised pranks, and that he would work harder to fight against them than a simple misunderstanding.

“He was promoted three months ago.” The secretary gave him a thin smile. “Perhaps you haven’t been paying attention. Sir.”

Severus opened his mouth to speak his boiling indignation, and then shut it again. It was true that he _hadn’t_ spoken much with Harry in the past three months, even before their…separation. But he couldn’t have missed something like this.

Could he?

The door of the office opened before he could speak again, and Harry leaned out. “Brian, do you have the original copies of the reports that Auror Longbottom filed? There seem to have been some _alterations_ between the ones that he filed and the ones that reached my desk. In a different hand.”

Harry’s eyes brushed over Severus then, and he frowned. But he turned to his secretary and added, “Never mind, take another ten minutes or so and then bring them in.”

 _He thinks he can dismiss me in ten minutes?_ Severus stalked past Brian’s desk and into the office. There was no one else there, which at least meant that Severus could speak as he liked without the fear that this would become public knowledge soon.

“Is this a prank?”

“You showing up at my office like this? I wish it was. Then maybe it would mean you’d grown a sense of humor.”

Severus stepped backwards. Harry’s eyes weren’t hard so much as—cold. He watched Severus with a slightly impatient tuck of his arm behind his back, as if he didn’t think him worth the effort to reach for his wand but might change that perception.

“Why are you here?” Harry added. “You should have known that we’re not going to date again.”

“You never told me you’d been promoted to Head Auror.”

“You weren’t home the night it happened. Or the night after. When you came in the next night and I tried to tell you, you told me that I should have realized you were thinking about a new potion, and gave me a ten-minute lecture for interrupting you. Then you missed dinner the next two nights.” Harry shrugged a little. “That was when I realized our desires would probably never coincide again, and I started doing some serious thinking, and not long after that, I left.”

Severus stared at him. “But Draco never mentioned it, either.”

Harry snorted. “As indifferent as Draco is to everything that’s not his own comfort, he probably thought you couldn’t have missed it. The _Daily Prophet_ had stories on it for a week. Why would he bring it up? It wasn’t about him or Potions, after all.”

Severus looked away from Harry and towards the wall. The office was larger than the one Harry had had before, he noticed, and with a few landscapes, Muggle paintings, on the wall. They showed the sea and a scene of distant dark moors. Severus had never seen them before, and wouldn’t have considered them emblematic of Harry’s taste if anyone had told him about them.

Resentment curdled his tongue, but he still managed to speak. “You didn’t make an _effort_ to tell me about it. And there are no pictures of Draco and me here, either.”

“Why would I want to keep around pictures of people who made me feel awful about myself and never listened to what I had to say?”

Severus whipped back around. “I was busy! I have a busy career! You could have tried harder!”

“With Ron and Hermione, I don’t have to try that hard,” Harry said calmly. “With fellow Aurors, either. With Ginny and Luna. With Theseus.” He smiled a little, and Severus remembered the reed-thin fellow he’d caught Harry with once in Diagon Alley.

“I don’t believe that you met him after you left me and Draco.”

“Perhaps because that would be inaccurate.”

“I knew it.”

Harry didn’t turn a hair at all under Severus’s harsh whisper, where once he would have leaped to soothe him. Severus didn’t understand what had changed. “I started getting to know him in earnest after I left you and Draco. I met him six months before that, on a case. He and I only started dating last week. I didn’t lay it all out in Diagon Alley when you confronted me, because I didn’t want my dating life picked over by the public.”

“Why did you never tell me about him?”

“Why didn’t Draco mention Astoria to me? Why didn’t you say something about Ares?”

“We have _needs_ that you cannot fulfill.”

“And I have ones that you can’t.”

“What are those?” Severus moved towards Harry, intending to grip him and shake it out of him. Because he knew that he was more intellectually refined than anyone Harry could have found on a case, so _those_ needs could have been met with him, and so could the sexual ones, and what others could Harry have?

Harry’s wand snapped up into his hand. “Back off, Severus.” His voice remained soft and cold.

“You would not hurt me.” Severus took a step forwards.

“ _Incarcerous._ ”

Severus fell over, wrapped up in the ropes of the hex. Harry walked past him and opened the door, saying something else. The bloody secretary stepped into the room, looked down at Severus, nodded, and then Levitated him out.

“The Longbottom files, Brian,” Harry added. “And I would appreciate it if the telephone boxes could be reconfigured so that Severus Snape isn’t admitted under any pretext of seeking me out again.”

“Yes, sir.”

Severus tried to say that was ridiculous, that only people in some high position of power like the Minister could have that done, but his mouth was muffled by the ropes. Brian did clear them away and stand him up roughly, then walked him at wandpoint to the lifts.

“I wouldn’t try coming in here again, if I was you,” Brian said conversationally.

“He can’t _do_ this! He doesn’t have the power!”

“He’s Head Auror,” Brian said. He still didn’t move, so Severus reluctantly punched the button for the lifts. “It’s not a joke, the way he warned me you would think it was. And you’re to be kept out of the Ministry unless you’re here on legitimate business. Head Auror Potter is not your legitimate business anymore.”

“He’s not going to fuck you,” Severus muttered as the lift arrived.

Brian laughed. “That makes two of us.”

The lift carried Severus away, while he stared up at the ceiling and tried to imagine the bond he had once felt connected him to Harry as permanently severed. It had not been before, he fervently believed. There was still the chance that Harry could have fixed his mistake, _realized_ his mistake, and come to apologize.

But now there was not.

Severus hated how empty that made him feel.

*

“Are you all right? I heard about the incident at the Ministry.”

Harry grimaced and kissed Theseus on the cheek. “I’m fine. It was unpleasant, but I thought he would probably confront me sooner or later. All I wanted was to make him back off.”

“Not revenge on him?”

Harry started to answer in a joking way, but Theseus was standing with his hands on Harry’s waist in the middle of his flat, and no sign of moving any time soon, despite their plans. Harry cleared his throat. “No.”

“Lots of people would.”

“It wouldn’t make any difference,” Harry said. “In fact, it would probably just convince him—and Draco—that I was still in love with them and regretting leaving them. This is the most satisfaction I’m ever going to get.”

“It’s not perfect.”

“Neither am I.”

Theseus blinked, then smiled. “Well, then. This isn’t the way I thought dating you would go, but I can’t say I’m upset about it.”

“You probably expected some dashing hero,” Harry said, leaning his head on Theseus’s shoulder as they headed towards the Floo. He preferred it when someone held him as they were Flooing together, although he’d only done it once, with Theseus last week. “Who would slay a dragon on the first date and a manticore on the second.”

Theseus laughed. “Part of me was that childish, sure. But I find I like this better.”

“Me, too,” Harry said, and luxuriated in the sensation of arms sliding around him as he entered the Floo.

That, and not having to look back.

**The End.**


End file.
